Heather Buchel is a front-end engineer who likes writing about accessibility, web tech, cooking, living in Brooklyn, and her dog Pepper.
Something I've been stewing on lately, as someone introduced to teams as an "accessibility specialist", is how much I am actually able to influence teams to improve their practices around web accessibility. Or how much I'm not able to. This isn't really a revelation or a surprise, but I've found that teams and orgs that struggle with accessibility, are already struggling with a multitude of other…
Every so often the creative things in my life become a burden that I overthink. Which means, this blog needs a small reset. I would love a huge beautiful redesign but the creative juices aren't quite flowing. In the meantime, there are some technical things I want to work on (automating some workflows, webmentions, etc) that I don't want to feel blocked because I'm agonizing over font choices. So,…
I was thinking about parts of the web community/industry that we've lost in the past 5 years or so and speculating on some of the reasons why. No right answers nor thoroughly thought out, and I'll definitely miss some, but wanted to throw these thoughts into my own little space before I forget them. We haven't completely lost everything in this list, for better or worse. Some have been pretty top…
This article from Salma really resonates with me and honestly explains why I'm so sour about AI code assistant tools. Anytime I scoff at using them, inevitably someone says something along the lines of "But they're coming! They're all getting better!" Sure, I'll wait for that day then. I am eager for the days where I'm not spending time reminding people to add their missing alt text, or to convert…
I was just thinking about how people can get very defensive when you bring up accessibility issues that need to be addressed and how it differs depending on your audience. Individual contributors In my experience they take it best. Whether it's designers or developers, typically they just want to learn and do better. Usually less defensiveness. Sometimes low confidence about whether or not they…
TLDR : Get your accessibility tooling off from your developers' machines and into the CI. This is one of those pieces I would share with folks who are new to advocating for automated accessibility testing in their engineering orgs; especially if you feel stuck at that phase of "I know all the tools we should be using, but now what?" Since I recently joined a new team (and a new company!) , I've…
I recently remembered that early-ish in 2024 I started a thread of games I wanted to play in the upcoming year. I thought it would be fun to look back on what I played (or didn't play) this year and which ones I actually enjoyed! I'll include everything mentioned in that list, and everything else I tried out. I don't have a ranking system or anything, just a few thoughts here and there. And, there…
As I'm currently looking for my next role, I've had to do serious reflection on the work I actually want to do. My conclusion from this reflection is that teams generally don't hire for the work I really like, with some rare exceptions. This is why I almost always end up carving out my own space. Whenever I join a team, regardless of what the job description said, I fall into filling the gaps…
I thought I'd make a list of things I wish I could go back and tell my younger self as a web developer who was just beginning to lean into web accessibility as part of her career path. For some context, I was a self taught web developer. I learned what I could from the internet. And my early career had me working more with back-end developers than other senior front-end developers. It was a lot of…
TLDR: At some point, we told design they couldn't sit with us anymore, and surprise! It backfired! Now, not only has the field and profession of web design suffered, but also, we build shitty websites. As I was writing this, I noticed how weird it felt using the term web designer. Isn't that weird? Also, I considered titling this "How the men folk ruined web design" and just hear me out, I am…